Lav Diaz’s Magellan is a visually striking, critical portrait of the explorer

In Magellan, director Lav Diaz offers a spare, visually intense portrait of Ferdinand Magellan, with Gael García Bernal in the title role. Manohla Dargis, writing for The New York Times, describes the film as a selective, often brutal account that frames the explorer as both a man of his time and an instrument of terror.

Diaz’s storytelling is elliptical rather than encyclopedic: he skims historic events, omits some travelers and moves characters on and offscreen with little introduction. The review recounts the expedition’s toll — several lost vessels, tens of thousands of miles sailed, most of the crew dead, and Magellan killed at 41 by Indigenous people — and notes how the film repeatedly returns to the places and people the voyage encountered and exploited.

Dargis praises the film’s imagery, calling it at times “visually intoxicating,” with square framing, minimal camera movement, tableau-vivant compositions and chiaroscuro that evoke Renaissance painting. Bernal’s performance is described as pungent and uninviting, while the enslaved servant Enrique emerges as a more expressive moral presence.

Diaz keeps a measured, quasi-analytic distance and skews the aggrandizing myths of the Age of Discovery. The film, Not Rated and running 2 hours 40 minutes with English subtitles, is in theaters.

Key Topics

Culture, Ferdinand Magellan, Magellan Expedition, Lav Diaz, Gael Garcia Bernal, Malacca